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“The gospel miracle is that human beings like us from time to time evade the temptations of power and the brittleness of success and actually manage to vulnerably love another person who has all the potential of turning on us and rejecting us. Every time such love is ventured, another piece of the gospel is proclaimed, and the Kingdom of God is made credible.”

Eugene H. Peterson, Leap Over A Wall

“Considering the full sweep of the Christian tradition, one would have to conclude that the most profane word we can utter is that word, mine.”

William Willimon

“‘Fear God!’ is a call that puts us in our place and puts all other fears, hopes, and aspirations in their place.”

Derek Kidner

“The fear of God is that affectionate reverence, by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father’s law.”

“To a truly envious human being, the success or blessing of another – particularly a rival, and most particularly a close rival – is an affront, a kind of assault . . . Envy, like the pride that spawns it, is inevitably comparative. The envier wants to tear down a competitor because “he hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.” The core of envy is the desire to cut somebody down to size, to change the basis of comparison with oneself, to hamstring rivals so that they have to drop out of the race in whatever competition the envier cares about.”

Cornelius Plantinga

“Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.”

1 John 3: 13

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”

“It shouldn’t be an easy walk from the pew to the weight bench, but it is made easy by a Christianity that looks more like a spiritual fitness program than a Gospel balm . . . The church is not like CrossFit; it is more like the hospital, or even the morgue. It is not a place where bad people go to be made good, but a place where bad people are loved in their badness.”

Conor Gwin, “My Church is Not CrossFit”

“The church is not in the world to teach sinners how to straighten up and fly right. That’s the world’s business; and on the whole it does a fairly competent—even gleefully aggressive—job of it. The church is supposed to be in the forgiveness business. Its job in filling pulpits is to find derelict nobodies who are willing to admit that they’re sinners and mean it. It’s supposed to take sheep who can be nothing but lost … and stand them up to proclaim that lostness, deadness, uselessness, and nothingness are God’s cup of tea. The church’s job is not to go around implying that those desperate states are conditions we must get over as quickly as possible once we’ve been found; its true work is to invite us all to go moonstruck over the news that the one operative consideration in our life is the Passion of the Finder to find.”

Robert Farrar Capon

“It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission – God’s mission.”

“Suffering makes people bitter or it makes people beautiful. How was Joseph able to forgive his brothers? He realized that there was an invisible hand that was always controlling his life. He entrusted himself to those two hands. Entrust yourself to those hands. They are good hands.”

Dustin Salter

“In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who
said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”

C.S. Lewis

“The Lord upholds all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open your hand;
you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and kind in all his works.”

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”

Augustine

“Faith without works is dead (James 2: 17), and the same goes for hope. Without costly action, hope can soften into sentimentality. With costly action, hope may harden into reality . . . Hope is the reach of our hearts for the cure. It’s the reach of our hearts toward what we think will fulfill us, secure us, save us – and not just us, but also the whole world . . . Classical Christian hope centers on Jesus Christ alone, rejecting his rivals as pseudo-saviors.”

“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”

Augustine

“In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity… But he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.”

C.S. Lewis, Miracles

“The soul that on Jesus relies,
He’ll never, no never deceive;
He freely and faithfully gives
More blessings than we can conceive.
Yea, down to old age he will keep,
Nor will he forsake us at last;
He knows and is known by his sheep;
They’re his, and he will hold them fast.”

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Though sin wars, it shall not reign; and though it breaks our peace, it cannot separate from his love. Nor is it inconsistent with his holiness and perfection, to manifest his favor to such poor defiled creatures, or to admit them to communion with himself; for they are not considered as in themselves, but as one with Jesus, to whom they have fled for refuge, and by whom they live by faith.”

John Newton

“My friend, if you think of your Christian life … with this sense of grudge, or as a wearisome task or duty, I tell you to go back to the beginning of your life, retrace your steps to the wicket gate through which you passed. Look at the world in its evil and sin, look at the hell to which it was leading you, and then look forward and realize that you are set in the midst of the most glorious campaign into which a man could ever enter, and that you are on the noblest road that the world has ever known.”

“Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade – not outside of it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not right they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not right for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.”

Dorothy Sayers

“Power is for flourishing – teeming, fruitful, multiplying abundance. Power creates and shapes an environment where creatures can flourish . . . Image bearing is for power . . . image bearing is for flourishing. The image bearers do not exist for their own flourishing alone, but to bring the whole creation to its fulfillment. Why is power a gift? Because power is for flourishing. When power is used well, people and the whole cosmos come more alive to what they were meant to be. And flourishing is the test of power . . . In enslavement, one human being asserts unlimited power over another, an assertion that requires not just the inflation of the slave owner’s power to unholy, godlike levels, but the eradication of the slave’s power.”

Andy Crouch, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant . . .”

“Discipline is like a vaccine. It inflicts lesser pain now to avoid greater pain later.”

Dan Doriani, The Life of a God-Made Man

“There’s one more voice you may need to adjust. It’s the voice in your head whispering, There’s not enough. Not enough resources, spots in the best schools, teacher’s attention, opportunities, friends who will provide the right type of influence. Not enough hours in the day, funds in the account, time to protect the planet, chances to do things over. Fear of scarcity is alive and blooming inside the minds of most parents. That’s what sends their voices into the pinched and panicky zone. Fear is behind the rushing, hovering, chiding, and pleading that sours our conversations with our children . . . For as long as I have practiced therapy with families, parents have been worried about scarcity . . . Relinquish the fear and you open a door to enchantment.”

Wendy Mogel, Voice Lessons, 4.

“Salvation is . . . membership in the family of God . . .The creation of a family with children is the reason for all of God’s activity. This is how he intends to show his glory . . . Our sonship to God is the apex of creation and the goal of redemption . . . The story of Paradise lost becoming Paradise regained is the story of God’s grace bringing us from alienation from him to membership in his family . . . Our self-image, if it is to be biblical, will begin just here. God is my Father (the Christian’s self-image always begins with the knowledge of God and who he is!); I am one of his children (I know my real identity); his people are my brothers and sisters (I recognize the family to which I belong and have discovered my deepest ‘roots’).”